Update: Animoto Mojo

While we are on the subject of using programs like cooliris to dazzle family, friends, and clients, I wanted to remind all of you about Animoto, a slick "web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos... [in] a widescreen format... [that] have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer." They are out of beta now (after one full year of development). A few quick stats pulled from their blog:

- 4 million videos have been made on the Animoto platform

- More than 250,000 users in 200-some countries have registered on Animoto.com

- Animoto vids have been watched over 50 million times on Animoto.com, blogs, social networks, video sharing sites and web sites around the world!

Finally, here's an excerpt about Animoto from a blog I wrote in January:

Now here's an online service to get excited about. It's called Animoto and it creates MTV-style movies out of your photographs, music, and video clips. Writes EMorton, G4TV:

"It's like tossing a bunch of steel, glass and leather into a box, shaking it up and then opening the box to find a brand new Ferrari."

I agree. It's beautiful, well-designed, and exceptionally user-friendly. And your finished video can be posted all over the Net -- on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle, Blogger, and gobs of other websites that support embedded videos...

View SmugMug on cooliris

Turns out that SmugMug, which is one of the online photo services I use to showcase and sell my photography, is natively programmed so it can use cooliris to display images in stunning 3D format. To see what I am talking about, do this:

1. Install the cooliris plugin in your browser (they currently support Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari).

2. Go to one of my wedding galleries on SmugMug.

3. Now look in the upper right hand corner of your browser window. You'll notice that the cooliris icon is lit up in color. That means the website you are visiting has been programmed so cooliris can display it. Click on the icon and cooliris will show you how dazzling your work can look in a 3D environment.

I wish I could claim that I did the fancy programming that enabled my SmugMug galleries to be able to be displayed in cooliris. But I didn't. In fact, I only discovered this marriage made in heaven when the cooliris folks dropped me a note thanking me for mentioning their cool program and mentioning how good my wedding photos looked in it!

Two more things:

1. If you want to create a stand alone gallery of select images that can be displayed by cooliris, the cooliris folks have created PicLens Publisher to automate the process for you. Go here to find out more.

2. For a quick overview of how cooliris works, go here.

Award-Winning Short Film Shot With Still Camera

Award-winning short film shot with still camera. Over 2000 photographs were stitched together to form movement.

Between You and Me
Written, Shot, Directed, Edited by Patryk Rebisz

"Rio" (With The Vanguard Band)

Here's a fun, creative video that suggests, again, the happy marriage of photography and video.

"Rio" (With The Vanguard Band)
Shot & Directed by Patryk Rebisz
Edited By Erinnisse Heuer

GigaPan Systems Imager Beta

GigaPan robotic imager system enables ultra-high resolution panoramic digital photographs. The system includes software for stitching together multiple images, and for uploading gigapans to Gigapan Web servers which enables viewing by internet visitors.

Purchase A GigaPan Imager

See Samples of Gigapan Images

Light Painting: Video Tutorials